by C. A. Ellis

At first glance the typical female observer would not have been turned on by his outward appearance. Five-foot-five wasn’t a bad height for a 17-year-old young man, but the form of the body was rail thin and wiry; lacking the muscular physique that both sexes preferred.

Straggly strands of withered brown hair poked out from their prison of a grimy cap that was standard apparel for most fast-food restaurant workers. His face was afflicted with erupting pimples, but what would you expect if you spent eight hours of your time dropping oily fries, all for the purpose of saving for your college education and paying your car insurance like a good young adult should?

However, being the surveyor that I was, I studied the face more closely. I ended up being swallowed by two ocean blues, rimmed by long black lashes, which shifted my attention away from handling cash and taking orders. He rarely spoke, but I loved it when he did, in that tenor tone that was still on its way to reaching its fullest depth. When it got there, any young woman would worry about her heart palpitating the way mine did.

I don’t even know how it escalated into the hilariously glorious chemistry it became. All my mahogany eyes did was peer into his ocean ones and magic happened, or so I thought.

He, on the other hand, looked back with confusion in his eyes. At first he couldn’t understand my little habit of quickly looking his way and turning back to my work, pretending nothing of the sort had occurred. Soon, however, the confusion in his eyes turned to playfulness when he began to pick up on my intentions.

Upon graduating high school, we both went our separate ways for a while. We attended different colleges and he quit the fast-food place, but I stayed. It was a little sad not having him there anymore, though it was nice to have my heart beating at a regular rate, and a healthy one, at that.

Somewhere along the week of August, I skipped into work as happy as a lark when I suddenly saw a massive form salting the fries. To my surprise, the form turned around, and those ocean-blue eyes peered into mine one more time. The scrawny frame had now been replaced by a set of wiry muscles, with that same black watch that was his trademark around his wrist. Finally, grinning without his braces, he flashed me pearly whites.

My eyes watered and burned from the humidity of the summer day, but also from acute shock. The familiar fwop, fwop, fwop of the ticker started up in my chest again.

My gaze shifted down his entire frame to fixate on his newly-built derriere, and I felt my face getting hotter by the minute.

He raised his nimble, bottle-cap fingers and offered me a wave.

Good to have you back, I yelled aloud in my head.

* * * THE END * * *